Longtime local television and radio journalist Gloria Penner died Saturday after a two-year battle with cancer. She was 81.

Known for her boundless energy and endless curiosity, Penner joined KPBS in 1969 as the station’s director of community relations. And in her subsequent decades with the local public-television and radio outlet, she collected many titles and flexed considerable media muscle.

She was a writer and editor for the organization’s “On-Air” magazine. She headed the TV station’s program production unit and hosted KPBS Radio’s “These Days.” She hosted multiple public-affairs TV programs and produced segments for “Nightly Business Report” and “The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour.”

Penner was in front of the camera, behind the camera and on the web. And she never lost her enthusiasm for people who made news and for news that made people sit up and listen.

“She was a fighter from day one,” said KPBS General Manger Tom Karlo, who began working with Penner in 1973, when he was an SDSU student and she was director of public affairs. “She was one of the first women to break into management at KPBS when the ‘good-old boys’ were running the station. She was the first woman to get a senior management position. She fought hard not just for stories on politics, but for stories that focused on women and women’s rights. She was passionate about all of those things.”

Penner participated in KPBS’ election coverage for more than 30 years. She moderated countless town-hall meetings, debates and forums for TV and radio and for the League of Women Voters. For local politicians, interviews with Penner were a required stop on the campaign trail. She created and hosted the Friday journalists’ confab “The Editor’s Roundtable” for nearly 14 years. Her last broadcast aired at the end of July.

“Certainly she was an absolute powerhouse,” said Laura Walcher, principal public relations consultant for J. Walcher Communications and a longtime San Diego media presence. “She was a great example to many of us, that you can do what you do in a man’s world without losing your femininity and grace. She made a major impact on every bit of society that she touched.”

Penner’s collection of broadcasting awards includes seven Emmys, five Golden Mike awards, the San Diego Press Club’s Harold Keen Award and the Living Legacy Award from the Women’s International Center. In 2003, the San Diego Chapter of the League of Women Voters created the Gloria Penner Award for Civic Service. Penner herself was the first recipient.

“Gloria was one of a kind,” San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said in a statement. “She was very charming, but once the interview started, she never pulled any punches. The term ‘softball’ was not in her vocabulary.”

A proud product of Brooklyn and a longtime member of the San Diego Brooklyn Club, Penner began her professional life as a high-school English teacher. A class in radio production got her hooked on media, and broadcasting jobs in San Francisco, Hawaii and Washington, D.C. followed.